Project Sigil 90% Of D&D’s Project Sigil Team Laid Off

Reports are coming in of a swathe of layoffs at Wizards of the Coast, constituting 90% of the team of the new Project Sigil virtual tabletop platform. In all, over 30 people have been laid off, leaving a team of around 3 people.

Sigil is still in beta, only recently made public three weeks ago. Recent reports indicated that the scope of the project was seemingly being cut back.

WotC’s Andy Collins—who has worked on multiple editions of D&D and other WotC TTRPGs going back to 1996—reported via LinkedIn that he was one of those laid off. He indicated that the small team left behind would continue to work on the project.

More news as it comes in.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

You make it sound like pessimism is a good thing. In truth it just diminishes.

Everything invention that works, experienced a moment before when it didn’t work.

Just pointing out pessimists have a little optimist in them, even if they're only optimistic about being a pessimist.

 

[Parmandur]

I believe MtG Arena was not in-house either

Nope, Arena is a fully in-house Wizards of the Coast production.

 

[KYRON45]

That said:

The flashy 3D animations and graphics engine look snazzy, though. Maybe they can sell it to Roll20?

Maybe they should buy Roll20.

 

[Reynard]

Maybe they should buy Roll20.

They couldn't make it worse.

 

[KYRON45]

That Sigil was a big draw is a bold claim. I have never seen a 3PP hype being in the Sigil ecosystem, but they certainly do being in the Beyond ecosystem.

Did you look? Because I did. All of those things have entries in both the PHB and the DMG and are incomplete in each individual book.

Seriously, the tendency to just move to defense mode without actually making an effort to.examine or confirm is exhausting.

The rules for D&D 2024 are fine. The art is amazing. The monster design is by and large an improvement. But the organization sucks. That's just something that is true.

Telling people their comments and opinions are nonsense is what makes people defensive.

 

[OB1]

I hope everyone will continue to enjoy their exclusive Project Sigil dragon miniatures for preordering the deluxe DND Beyond Core Rules sets.

You mean the discount sets that bundled physical and digital together with a nice savings and also happened to include a digital mini as a throw in?

 

[Staffan]

You make it sound like pessimism is a good thing. In truth it just diminishes.

Every invention that works, experienced a moment before when it didn’t work.

The world needs both. You need the people who look at what could be possible, and the people who look at what could go wrong.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Which makes me wonder: if this was intended to be a mass-market thing, why didn't they program it so it could run on lower-end tech? Not doing so would seem to chop off a huge chunk of the potential market before you even start.

This is literally something I've been going "BUT WHY?!" about since we saw the initial demo, which was very visually fancy, because obviously that wasn't going to run on lower-end tech.

If I'm guessing and being positive I'd imagine the plan was:

A) Phones and computers are getting more and more powerful! (Incorrect but a common misconception, actual gains are getting increasingly minimal/specialized)

B) We should plan for the future not today - planning for today was the mistake we made with Silverlight! So let's select an engine that will be around for a while.

C) We also want an engine that is relatively easy to extend to more devices in future.

All these choices led them to Unreal 5. I think they expected that they'd have a product out sooner, and that it'd run well on PCs and could then quickly be translated to Mac and so-called "flagship" phones (i.e. $1000+ phones). And in say, four or five years, most new phones would run it.

I don't think that was remotely the right call, but I do think that was the call that got made. Or something just dumber but I'm being charitable.

Ignoring Apple is a good (and Good) thing to do. Friends don't let friends buy Apple.

Whilst I kind of agree, the issue is that in the United States of America, 58% of mobile phones are Apple and it was trending that way even back then. Some Americans are even socially trashy about people not having Apple phones, which is wild.

 

[mamba]

You mean the discount sets that bundled physical and digital together with a nice savings and also happened to include a digital mini as a throw in?

the miniature came with any option of the three books, the bundle, the digital option, and the print-only option. You got the discount for buying both together, the other two were not discounted

 

[Nylanfs]

Indeed.

Steam numbers for Talespire are peaking at 1000 each week - at launch it reached a peak of 1400 players.

Those are not great numbers. It's not growing, though it's surprisingly stable looking over the figures, and it's better than Suicide Squad, but it's certainly not setting the world on fire.

(Source: https://steamdb.info/app/720620/charts/#3y)

I expect that if Sigil had been launched in a good state, it would have had far more traction. It's still a bit of specialist software, but that's okay.

Interesting, better numbers than FG, but they are skewed by being able to run FG without Steam, and a lot of the longtime players bought it before it was on Steam.

https://steamdb.info/app/1196310/charts/#max